What Are Your Thoughts on Pain?

Pain is our body’s reaction to all kinds of bodily disruptions. It warns of danger and makes us act—to move toward pleasure and away from pain, to diagnose the cause of the pain, to reach conclusions and to advance in our lives to new states.

There is pain that prods us from behind, making us evolve, and also existential pain that ultimately pulls us forward to greater fulfillment.

Pain impacts our ego, the desire to enjoy at the expense of others. We can feel pain when we feel bad, or when sympathizing with others who feel bad, or when the pain of envy strikes us when we see that others are better off than us.

There is pain that prods us from behind, making us evolve, and also existential pain that ultimately pulls us forward to greater fulfillment.

We would feel nothing at all if it were not for pain. Whether it is a certain kind of conflict, contact or pressure, our every feeling is built upon a certain form of pain, and we can only feel pleasure, fulfillment and enjoyment after pain.

We would feel nothing at all if it were not for pain. Whether it is a certain kind of conflict, contact or pressure, our every feeling is built upon a certain form of pain, and we can only feel pleasure, fulfillment and enjoyment after pain.

However, we can overcome pain. When we rise above the ego, i.e. when we ascend beyond prioritizing self-interest at the expense of others to its opposite—prioritizing the benefit of others—we can then live in complete fulfillment, without emptiness, where we relate to everything and everyone out of an ever-increasing wholeness and love.

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How Can People Avoid Being Ashamed of Themselves?

We constantly adapt to various codes of behavior in order to avoid feeling ashamed.

Beyond taking care of life’s essentials, namely that we have food, shelter, good hygiene and can take care of our families, everything else we do is motivated by our need to avoid shame.

The reason for our need to avoid shame stems from the very basis of our existence, in the process of our reality’s formation.

The reason for our need to avoid shame stems from the very basis of our existence, in the process of our reality’s formation.

The wisdom of?Kabbalah, which explains the process of our reality’s creation and evolution, describes that the Creator (the will to bestow) created the creation (the will to receive) and filled it with light (pleasure, fulfillment, enjoyment). After the creation felt the pleasure by the light, it realized that there was a greater quality behind the pleasure that it felt—a giver of the pleasure. Feeling that there was a giver of the pleasure and that it was a receiver of the pleasure caused the creation to feel shame. In other words, shame is the first reaction of creation to feeling its Creator, and it is thus what we must complement in order to attain likeness to the Creator.

That is why in our world, which emerged from this giving-receiving interplay between the Creator and the creation, the feeling of shame is behind the way we think and act in society.